Trickle-Down Was Nothing More Than the Politics of Helping the Rich and Powerful Get Richer and More Powerful.

By Elizabeth Warren, Reader Supported News

21 January 2015 – posted by Readers Supported News.

Today, United States Senator Elizabeth Warren spoke at the AFL-CIO National Summit on Raising Wages. The text of Senator Warren’s remarks as prepared for delivery follows, and a PDF copy of her remarks is available here:

Good morning, and thank you MaryBe for the introduction, and for your work with the North Carolina AFL-CIO. Your efforts make a real difference for our families.

I want to start by thanking Rich Trumka and Damon Silvers for your leadership on economic issues, for your good counsel, and, for a long time now, your friendship. I also want to give special thanks to my good friends from the Massachusetts AFL-CIO who are here today, Steve Tolman and Lou Mandarini.
I love being with my labor friends, and I’m especially glad to join you today for the AFL’s first-ever National Summit on Wages. You follow in the best tradition of the American labor movement for more than a century-always fighting for working people, both union and non-union. Today you’ve spotlighted an economic issue that is central to understanding what’s happening to people all over this country.
I recently read an article in Politico called “Everything is Awesome.” The article detailed the good news about the economy: 5% GDP growth in the third quarter of 2014, unemployment under 6%, a new all-time high for the Dow, low inflation.(i)

Despite the headline, the author recognized that not everything is awesome, but his point has been repeated several times: On many different statistical measures, the economy has improved and is continuing to improve. I think the President and his team deserve credit for the steps they’ve taken to get us here. In particular, job growth is a big deal, and we celebrate it.

I’ve spent most of my career studying what’s happening to America’s middle class, and I know that these four widely-cited statistics give an important snapshot of the success of the overall economy. But the overall picture doesn’t tell us much about what’s happening at ground level to tens of millions of Americans. Despite these cheery numbers, America’s middle class is in deep trouble.

Think about it this way: The stock market is soaring, and that’s great if you have a pension or money in a mutual fund. But if you and your husband or wife are both working full time, with kids in school, and you are among the half or so of all Americans who don’t have any money in stocks,(ii) how does a booming stock market help you?

Corporate profits(iii) and GDP are up. But if you work at Walmart, and you are paid so little that you still need food stamps to put groceries on the table, what does more money in stockholders’ pockets and an uptick in GDP do for you?

Unemployment numbers are dropping. But if you’ve got a part-time job and still can’t find full-time work — or if you’ve just given up because you can’t find a good job to replace the one you had — you are counted as part of that drop in unemployment,(iv) but how much is your economic situation improving?

Inflation rates are still low. But if you are young and starting out life with tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt locked into high interest rates by Congress, unable to find a good job or save to buy a house, how are you benefiting from low inflation?

A lot of broad national economic statistics say our economy is getting better, and it is true that the economy overall is recovering from the terrible crash of 2008. But there have been deep structural changes in this economy, changes that have gone on for more than thirty years, changes that have cut out hard-working, middle class families from sharing in this overall growth.

It wasn’t always this way.

Coming out of the Great Depression, America built a middle class unlike anything seen on earth. From the 1930s to the late 1970s, as GDP went up, wages went up pretty much across the board. In fact, 90% of all workers-everyone outside the top 10%-got about 70% of all the new income growth.(v) Sure, the richest 10% gobbled up more than their share-they got 30%. But overall, as the economic pie got bigger, pretty much everyone was getting a little more. In other words, as our country got richer, our families got richer. And as our families got richer, our country got richer. That was how this country built a great middle class.

But then things changed.

By 1980, wages had flattened out, while expenses kept going up. The squeeze was terrible. In the early 2000s, families were spending twice as much, adjusted for inflation, on mortgages as they had a generation earlier. They spent more on health insurance, and more to send their kids to college. Mom and dad both went to work, but that meant new expenses like childcare, higher taxes, and the costs of a second car. All over the country, people tightened their belts where they could, but it still hasn’t been enough to save them. Families have gone deep into debt to pay for college, to cover serious medical problems, or just to stay afloat a while longer.(vi) And today’s young adults may be the first generation in American history to end up, as a group, with less than their parents.(vii)

Remember how up until 1980, 90% of all people-middle class, working people, poor people-got about 70% of all the new income that was created in the economy and the top 10% took the rest? Since 1980, guess how much of the growth in income the 90% got? Nothing. None. Zero. In fact, it’s worse than that. The average family not in the top 10% makes less money than a generation ago.(viii) So who got the increase in income over the last 32 years? 100% of it went to the top ten percent. All of the new money earned in this economy over the past generation-all that growth in the GDP-went to the top.(ix) All of it.

That is a huge structural change. When I look at the data here – and this includes years of research I conducted myself – I see evidence everywhere about the pounding that working people are taking. Instead of building an economy for all Americans, for the past generation this country has grown an economy that works for some Americans. For tens of millions of working families who are the backbone of this country, this economy isn’t working. These families are working harder than ever, but they can’t get ahead. Opportunity is slipping away. Many feel like the game is rigged against them – and they are right. The game is rigged against them.

Since the 1980s, too many of the people running this country have followed one form or another of supply side – or trickle down – economic theory. Many in Washington still support it. When all the varnish is removed, trickle-down just means helping the biggest corporations and the richest people in this country, and claiming that those big corporations and rich people could be counted to create an economy that would work for everyone else.

Trickle-down was popular with big corporations and their lobbyists, but it never really made much sense. George Bush Sr. called it voodoo economics.(x) He was right, and let’s call it out for what it is: Trickle-down was nothing more than the politics of helping the rich-and-powerful get richer and more powerful, and it cut the legs out from under America’s middle class.

Trickle-down policies are pretty simple. First, fire the cops-not the cops on Main Street, but the cops on Wall Street. Pretty much the whole Republican Party – and, if we’re going to be honest, too many Democrats – talked about the evils of “big government” and called for deregulation. It sounded good, but it was really about tying the hands of regulators and turning loose big banks and giant international corporations to do whatever they wanted to do-turning them loose to rig the markets and reduce competition, to outsource more jobs, to load up on more risks and hide behind taxpayer guarantees, to sell more mortgages and credit cards that cheated people. In short, to do whatever juiced short term profits even if it came at the expense of working families.

Trickle down was also about cutting taxes for those at the top. Cut them when times are good, cut them when times are bad. And when that meant there was less money for road repairs, less money for medical research, and less money for schools and that our government would need to squeeze kids on student loans, then so be it. And look at the results: The top 10% got ALL the growth in income over the past 30 years-ALL of it-and the economy stopped working for everyone else.

The trickle-down experiment that began in the Reagan years failed America’s middle class. Sure, the rich are doing great. Giant corporations are doing great. Lobbyists are doing great. But we need an economy where everyone else who works hard gets a shot at doing great!

The world has changed beneath the feet of America’s working families. Powerful forces like globalization and technology are creating seismic shifts that are disrupting our economy, altering employment patterns, and putting new stresses on old structures. Those changes could create new opportunities-or they could sweep away the last vestiges of economic security for 90% of American workers. Those changes demand new and different economic policies from our federal government. But too many politicians have looked the other way. Instead of running government to expand opportunity for 90% of Americans and to shore up security in an increasingly uncertain world, instead of re-thinking economic policy to deal with tough new realities, for more than 30 years, Washington has far too often advanced policies that hammer America’s middle class even harder.

Look at the choices Washington has made, the choices that have left America’s middle class in a deep hole:

the choice to leash up the financial cops,

the choice in a recession to bail out the biggest banks with no strings attached while families suffered,

the choice to starve our schools and burden our kids with billions of dollars of student loan debt while cutting taxes for billionaires,

the choice to spend your tax dollars to subsidize Big Oil instead of putting that money into rebuilding our roads and bridges and power grids,

the choice to look the other way when employers quit paying overtime, reclassified workers as independent contractors and just plain old stole people’s wages,

the choice to sign trade pacts and tax deals that let subsidized manufacturers around the globe sell here in America while good American jobs get shipped overseas.

For more than thirty years, too many politicians in Washington have made deliberate choices that favored those with money and power. And the consequence is that instead of an economy that works well for everyone, America now has an economy that works well for about 10% of the people.

It wasn’t always this way, and it doesn’t have to be this way. We can make new choices – different choices – choices that put working people first, choices that aim toward a better future for our children, choices that reflect our deepest values as Americans.

One way to make change is to talk honestly and directly about work, about how we value the work that people do every day. We need to talk about what we believe:

We believe that no one should work full time and still live in poverty – and that means raising the minimum wage.
We believe workers have a right to come together, to bargain together and to rebuild America’s middle class.
We believe in enforcing labor laws, so that workers get overtime pay and pensions that are fully funded.
We believe in equal pay for equal work.
We believe that after a lifetime of work, people are entitled to retire with dignity, and that means protecting Social Security, Medicare, and pensions.

We also need a hard conversation about how we create jobs here in America. We need to talk about how to build a future. So let’s say what we believe:

We believe in making investments – in roads and bridges and power grids, in education, in research – investments that create good jobs in the short run and help us build new opportunities over the long run.
And we believe in paying for them-not with magical accounting scams that pretend to cut taxes and raise revenue, but with real, honest-to-goodness changes that make sure that we pay-and corporations pay-a fair share to build a future for all of us.
We believe in trade policies and tax codes that will strengthen our economy, raise our living standards, and create American jobs – and we will never give up on those three words: Made in America.

And one more point. If we’re ever going to un-rig the system, then we need to make some important political changes. And here’s where we start:

We know that democracy doesn’t work when congressmen and regulators bow down to Wall Street’s political power – and that means it’s time to break up the Wall Street banks and remind politicians that they don’t work for the big banks, they work for US!

Changes like this aren’t easy. But we know they are possible. We know they are possible because we have seen David beat Goliath before. We have seen lobbyists lose. We’ve seen it all through our history. We saw it when we created the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, when we passed health care reform. We saw it when President Obama took important steps to try and reform our immigration system through executive order just weeks ago. Change is difficult, but it is possible.

This is personal for me. When I was 12, my big brothers were all off in the military. My mother was 50 years old, a stay at home mom. My daddy had a heart attack, and it turned our little family upside down. The bills piled up. We lost the family station wagon, and we nearly lost our home. I remember the day my mother, scared to death and crying the whole time, pulled her best dress out of the closet, put on her high heels and walked to the Sears to get a minimum wage job. Unlike today, a minimum wage job back then paid enough to support a family of three. That minimum wage job saved our home-and saved our family.

My daddy ended up as a maintenance man, and my mom kept working at Sears. I made it through a commuter college that cost $50 a semester and I ended up in the United States Senate. Sure, I worked hard, but I grew up in an America that invested in kids like me, an America that built opportunities for kids to compete in a changing world, an America where a janitor’s kid could become a United States Senator. I believe in that America.
I believe in an America that builds opportunities. An America that ensures that all hardworking men and women earn good wages. An America that once again grows a strong, vibrant middle class.

I believe in that America, and I will fight for that America! And if we fight-side-by-side-I know we will build that America again.

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Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

From the U.S. Section of The New York Times:
Even Before Long Winter Begins, Energy Bills Send Shivers in New England – we add to this – just think of their opposition to ocean-located wind-power. Oh well – it is easy to blame others!

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE – Weekend December 13, 2014

Starts with Photo of Patricia Richardson, 78, a retiree in Salem, N.H., who has taken energy-saving measures and said she could not understand why her bills had still increased. Credit Charlie Mahoney for The New York Times.

Then reporting from SALEM, N.H. — John York, who owns a small printing business here, nearly fell out of his chair the other day when he opened his electric bill.

For October, he had paid $376. For November, with virtually no change in his volume of work and without having turned up the thermostat in his two-room shop, his bill came to $788, a staggering increase of 110 percent. “This is insane,” he said, shaking his head. “We can’t go on like this.”

For months, utility companies across New England have been warning customers to expect sharp price increases, for which the companies blame the continuing shortage of pipeline capacity to bring natural gas to the region.

Now that the higher bills are starting to arrive, many stunned customers are finding the sticker shock much worse than they imagined. Mr. York said he would have to reduce his hours, avoid hiring any new employees, cut other expenses and ultimately pass the cost on to his customers.

Like turning back the clocks and putting on snow tires, bracing for high energy bills has become an annual rite of the season in New England. Because the region’s six states — Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont — have an integrated electrical grid, they all share the misery.

These latest increases are salt in the wound. New England already pays the highest electricity rates of any region in the 48 contiguous states because it has no fossil fuels of its own and has to import all of its oil, gas and coal. In September, residential customers in New England paid an average retail price of 17.67 cents per kilowatt-hour; the national average was 12.94 cents.

Beyond that, the increases confound common sense, given that global oil prices have dropped to their lowest levels in years, and natural gas is cheap and plentiful from the vast underground shale reserves in nearby Pennsylvania.

But the benefits are not being felt here. Connecticut’s rate of 19.74 cents per kilowatt-hour for September was the highest in the continental United States and twice that of energy-rich states like West Virginia and Louisiana. The lowest rate, 8.95 cents, was in Washington State, where the Columbia River is the nation’s largest producer of hydropower.

For the coming winter, National Grid, the largest utility in Massachusetts, expects prices to rise to 24.24 cents, a record high. The average customer will pay $121.20 a month, a 37 percent increase from $88.25 last winter.
Photo
John York, a small-business owner in Salem, paid 110 percent more for electricity in November than he had in October. Credit Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist for The New York Times

The utilities argue that they are hamstrung unless they can increase the pipeline capacity for natural gas, which powers more than half of New England. That would not only lower costs for consumers, they say, but also create thousands of construction jobs and millions of dollars in tax revenue.

The region has five pipeline systems now. Seven new projects have been proposed. But several of them — including a major gas pipeline through western Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire, and a transmission line in New Hampshire carrying hydropower from Quebec — have stalled because of ferocious opposition.

The concerns go beyond fears about blighting the countryside and losing property to eminent domain. Environmentalists say it makes no sense to perpetuate the region’s dependence on fossil fuels while it is trying to mitigate the effects of climate change, and many do not want to support the gas-extraction process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, that has made the cheap gas from Pennsylvania available.

Consumers have been left in the middle, as baffled as they are angry. Utilities across the region are holding workshops and town meetings to try to address their concerns and offer tips on energy conservation. About 100 people showed up this month for a meeting at Salem High School here that included a presentation by Liberty Utilities, the largest natural gas distributor in New Hampshire.

John Shore, a company spokesman, told the audience that in times of peak demand, the available natural gas went first to residential and business customers. Some power plants that normally rely on gas then turn to more expensive fuels like oil, although not all plants have the ability to switch fuels. In some cases, electric generating plants go offline, and more expensive generators are used to make up the capacity.

Prices are also up this winter because they are based in part on last winter’s high prices. Arctic blasts from the polar vortex drove up the cost of wholesale power in New England to $5.05 billion for the three months from December 2013 through February 2014 alone — almost the same as the cost for the entire year of 2012.

Patricia Richardson, 78, a Salem retiree in the audience, said she had already had an energy audit on her 100-year-old house, installed triple-pane thermal windows, bought a new boiler, had insulation blown in and put weather stripping around leaks. She could not understand why her bill had still increased, even after pressing Mr. Shore.

Ms. Richardson said after the meeting that his explanation had been confusing. “I wanted to know in my heart that he was giving it to me square,” she said. “But I didn’t get that feeling.”
Photo
Marie Morris at a meeting at Salem High School held by Liberty Utilities, the largest natural gas distributor in New Hampshire. Credit Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist for The New York Times

Many utilities provide rebates when customers buy high-efficiency appliances, and offer free energy audits, savings plans and guidance on limiting energy use. Government programs and nonprofit organizations are stretching to help those who cannot pay the utility bills necessary to make it through this cold, dark season.

But even if these stopgap measures help some households in the short term, the outlook for the long term appears gloomy.

A year ago, the governors of the six New England states agreed to pursue a coordinated regional strategy, including more pipelines and at least one major transmission line for hydropower. The plan called for electricity customers in all six states to subsidize the projects, on the theory that they would make up that money in lower utility bills.

But in August, the Massachusetts Legislature rejected the plan, saying in part that cheap energy would flood the market and thwart attempts to advance wind and solar projects. That halted the whole effort.

“The impasse just kicks the can down the road, and I see no reason why this dynamic isn’t going to be repeated during the heating season for years to come,” said John Howat, a senior policy analyst at the National Consumer Law Center, a Boston-based nonprofit advocacy group for low-income residents.

“I think we need to be more aggressive in pursuing renewables and energy efficiency,” Mr. Howat said. “But I doubt we can implement those solutions quickly enough and at a sufficient scale to relieve the economic burden in the short term on those 30 percent of households that don’t have sufficient income to pay these bills.”

The problem may be getting worse, not only because of pipeline constraints but because old coal and oil power plants are being retired. The Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, which supplies nearly one-third of Vermont’s electricity, is also scheduled to go offline this month.

ISO New England, the independent system operator that oversees the region’s energy market, said it expected there to be “sufficient resources” this winter to meet demand. But in a November assessment, it called the pipeline constraints severe and said the reliability of the system would “continue to be threatened” until the region expanded its pipeline capacity or invested in other energy sources.

Figuring out how much new pipeline might be enough is not an easy calculation. Massachusetts, for one, is analyzing its needs now for a report due at the end of the month. It is a complex process, said Mark Sylvia, the state’s undersecretary for energy, because it must take into account the state’s desires to avoid dependence on one type of fuel, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and ensure reliability “so the lights stay on.”

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A version of this article appears in print on December 14, 2014, on page A22 of the New York edition with the headline: Even Before Long Winter Begins, Energy Bills Send Shivers in New England.

The Carbon Dividend

Chris Van Hollen to Introduce Plan to Auction Pollution Permits.

By JAMES K. BOYCE JULY 29, 2014

AMHERST, Mass. — FROM the scorched earth of climate debates a bold idea is rising — one that just might succeed in breaking the nation’s current political impasse on reducing carbon emissions. That’s because it would bring tangible gains for American families here and now.

A major obstacle to climate policy in the United States has been the perception that the government is telling us how to live today in the name of those who will live tomorrow. Present-day pain for future gain is never an easy sell. And many Americans have a deep aversion to anything that smells like bigger government.

What if we could find a way to put more money in the pockets of families and less carbon in the atmosphere without expanding government? If the combination sounds too good to be true, read on.

Representative Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, plans to introduce legislation today that would require coal, oil and natural gas companies to buy a permit for each ton of carbon in the fuels they sell. Permits would be auctioned, and 100 percent of the proceeds would be returned straight to the American people as equal dividends for every woman, man and child.

Paying dividends to all isn’t rocket science. The state of Alaska has been doing it since 1982. That’s when the Alaska Permanent Fund, the brainchild of Gov. Jay S. Hammond, a Republican, began to pay dividends from oil royalties based on the principle that the state’s natural wealth belonged to all its people. Residents claim their dividends by filling out an online form. Not surprisingly, the Alaska Permanent Fund is permanently popular among Alaskans. From 1982 through 2009, the fund paid out $17.5 billion. The biggest payout, by the way, came under Gov. Sarah Palin.

The main difference between Alaska’s fund and the one Mr. Van Hollen is proposing is that instead of creating an incentive to pump more oil, his legislation creates an incentive to burn less oil and other carbon-based fuels.

The number of permits initially would be capped at the level of our 2005 carbon dioxide emissions. This cap would gradually ratchet down to 80 percent below that level by 2050. Prices of fossil fuels would rise as the cap tightened, spurring private investment in energy efficiency and clean energy. Energy companies would pass the cost of permits to consumers in the form of higher fuel prices. But for most families, the gain in carbon dividends would be greater than the pain. In fact, my calculations show that more than 80 percent of American households would come out ahead financially — and that doesn’t even count the benefits of cleaner air and a cooler planet.

As the cap tightened, prices of fossil fuels would rise faster than quantity would fall, so total revenues would rise. The tighter the cap, the bigger the dividend. Voters not only would want to keep the policy in place for the duration of the clean energy transition, they would want to strengthen it.

The net effect on any household would depend on its carbon footprint — how much it spent, directly and indirectly, on fossil fuels. The less carbon it consumed, the bigger its net benefit. But why would a vast majority emerge as winners?

There are two reasons. First, among final consumers, households account for about two-thirds of fossil fuel use in the United States. Most of the remainder is consumed by government. In Mr. Van Hollen’s bill, households would receive these other carbon dollars, too.

Republicans should welcome this feature, since over the years it would return billions of dollars from the government to the people. Unlike a carbon tax, which brings in more revenue for the government, Mr. Van Hollen’s bill is, in effect, a tax cut.

The second reason is the dramatic skew in household incomes. The outsize consumption — and outsize carbon footprints — of the richest 10 percent of Americans means that they’ll furnish a similarly high fraction of the carbon dollars generated by household spending on gasoline, electricity, airplane trips and so on. For these households, the dividends won’t outweigh the costs. But the affluent can afford to pay for their emissions.

Does this bill stand a snowball’s chance in the partisan hell of Washington?

Its main political weakness is that no one stands to make a killing on it.

The bill’s main strength is that it protects the incomes of ordinary Americans as it protects the planet for their grandchildren.

In a democracy, this outcome is not too good to be true. If any climate bill can win bipartisan support, this is it. But it will succeed only if the American people — in blue states, red states and everywhere in between — come together to make Congress act.

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James K. Boyce is a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Tom Carlson, Government Affairs and Policy Associate, Advanced Energy Economy Innovative State Policy Advancing Our Energy System
How states have been leading the way with policies that advance our energy system and where we could go from here within the context of EPA’s new carbon regulations for the power sector.

PANEL 2: DEFENSE

PANEL 3: FUEL CELLS – GEOTHERMAL – SOLAR – ENERGY FROM WASTE

Karl Gawell, Executive Director, Geothermal Energy Association The Geothermal Industry in 2014
A review of the industry’s status in 2014 and of the growth trends in the U.S. and international geothermal markets.Bud DeFlavis, Director of Government Affairs, Fuel Cell & Hydrogen Energy Association
The fuel-cell industryLaToya Glenn, Renewable Energy Business Manager, Waste Management
WM Recovering Energy Value from the Materials We Manage.

David Biderman, VP of Advocacy, National Waste & Recycling Association
Waste-based energy (energy from landfill gas collection and waste-to-energy facilities) currently generates enough power in the U.S. to power about 3 million homes.

PANEL 4: HYDROPOWER AND WATER TECHNOLOGIES

Matthew Nocella, Manager of Strategic Communications, National Hydropower Association Hydropower’s Role in Our Clean Energy Future
Hydropower has tremendous opportunity to grow its role in the nation’s energy portfolio through various technologies, including conventional, new marine, and pumped storage applications.Jacob Irving, President, Canadian Hydropower AssociationBill Libro, Director of Federal Affairs, Minnesota PowerA Case Study for International Cooperation on Hydropower: Minnesota Power
Canadian companies are teaming up with their U.S. counterparts to help enable the development of renewable energy in the United States. Minnesota Power, for instance, is working with Canadian companies to develop renewables on both sides of the border.Thomas Horner, Vice President, Water Management, Inc. One Water
Water, sewere, stormwater, and the water/energy nexus

Jason Busch, Boardmember, Ocean Renewable Energy Coalition; Executive Director, Oregon Wave Energy Trust.Marine Renewable Energy: A New Addition to the Mix
The Ocean Renewable Energy Coalition is a national trade group that is leading the U.S. effort to develop the burgeoning forms of renewable energy derived from the waves, tides, and currents of our oceans and rivers. These sources are clean, reliable and perpetual, and can provide a significant new source of power both in the United State and around the world. This new industry will also provide a tremendous new opportunity for economic development around manufacturing and the marine supply chain.

2:05 PM
2:35 PM

PANEL 5: BIOENERGY

Tim Rials, Director, Southeastern Partnership for Integrated Biomass Supply SystemsDeploying an Advanced Biofuels Industry in the Southeast
Funded by USDA-NIFA, The Southeastern Partnership for Integrated Biomass Supply Systems (IBSS) is developing today’s forest resources for near-term progress while advancing energy crop supply systems optimized for infrastructure-compatible fuels production.Terry Nipp, Executive Director, Sun Grant Initiative
This presentation will showcase a collaborative effort by land grant universities to support research and education projects on bioenergy and biobased products. With support from USDA, DOE and DOT, we have implemented over $70 million in research projects over the past 6-7 years, with more than 200 projects with collaborating scientists in over 90% of the states.Morgan Pitts, Public Relations & Communications Manager, Enviva
Wood pellets and other processed woody biomass fuels can power generation and industrial customers seeking to decrease their dependence on fossil fuels and reduce their carbon footprint.

2:40 PM
3:20 PM

PANEL 6: BEHIND THE SCENES: FINANCE, GRID, AND STORAGE ISSUES

Fran Teplitz, Policy Director, Green America; Board Co-Chair, American Sustainable Business Council Action Fund Clean Energy Victory Bonds Katherine Hamilton, Policy Director, Energy Storage Association Energy Storage: Enabling a Cleaner, More Efficient and Resilient Grid
Energy policies that include energy storage will be key to enabling all resources-including renewable energy and energy efficiency–to operate more efficiently and effectively on the grid. This presentation will describe those legislative policy initiatives and their importance to the grid of the future in a carbon-constrained world.

Diana Rivera, Director of Market Development and Regulatory Affairs, Clean Line Energy

Delivering low-cost renewable energy to market
Clean Line is developing long-haul transmission lines to deliver thousands of megawatts of wind power from the windiest parts of the U.S. to communities and cities that lack access to new, low-cost renewable power. These clean energy infrastructure projects will create thousands of jobs, benefit electricity consumers and reduce carbon emissions by millions of tons per year.Len Jornlin, Chief Executive Officer, Empower Energies

A Path to Resiliency

The rationale for an integrated, renewable, distributed generation approach as a path to resiliency. How Solar and Combined Heat and Power (CHP) applications can provide energy savings and resiliency now for military, government agency, and private sector organizations, and how to finance those installations.

3:25 PM
4:05 PM

PANEL 7: ENERGY EFFICIENCY

Bruce Quinn, Vice President, Government Affairs for Rockwell Automation; Industrial Energy Efficiency CoalitionThe Opportunity of Industrial Energy Efficiency
Often overlooked in the policy arena, the energy savings opportunity in the manufacturing and industrial sector is massive, as industry accounts for one-third of U.S. energy use, and there are technologies available today making industrial processes far more energy efficient.John Pouland, Vice-President (Government Affairs and Solutions), Philips Lighting The Importance of Energy Efficiency in the Private and Public Space
John will focus on the rapid development of LED technologies and the economic and environmental impacts this technology has for consumers and the Government (particularly the military) alike.Gregory B Johnson, President, Blue Penguin Corporation
Blue Penguin tracks and reduces companies’ energy use. Using a suite of hardware and proprietary software, Blue Penguin can see where waste is and eliminate it.

Opower: Unlocking Efficiency through Behavior & Information
Behavioral Energy Efficiency, as pioneered by Opower, has the potential to save the United States almost 19,000 GWhs of energy each year, or roughly $2.1 billion in energy expenditures. This presentation talks about just what Behavioral Energy Efficiency is, where it’s already at work today, and how government policy can unleash this potential.

First He Ran the Obama Seder. Now Eric Lesser is Running for Office.

The White House Seder in April 2009. Lesser is fifth from President Obama’s right. (White House / Pete Souza)

Back in April 2008, Eric Lesser began what would become a White House tradition when he helped organize a seder for staffers on the Obama campaign trail. “We were feeling a little down because we realized it wouldn’t be possible to get home for Passover,” the 28-year-old recalled. “So we set up our makeshift seder in this windowless basement in the Sheraton in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and when we were down there getting ready to begin, all of a sudden Senator Obama popped his head in and said, ‘Is this where the seder is?’ and asked, ‘Can I join?’ It was actually a little funny, because we were planning to have a bit of a briefer version, but he was very interested in it, and so we went through almost the entire haggadah, which is much more than I had ever done with my own family.”

The seder became a yearly tradition for the Obama family, and Lesser would go on to serve as a special assistant to David Axelrod and later director of strategic planning for the Council of Economic Advisers. He was profiled–along with his weekly shabbat dinners with other young Obama administration staffers–in the New York Times, and then moved on to Harvard for law school, where he’d previously attended college. And just this week, he launched his own political career by announcing his candidacy for State Senate in Massachusetts.

Lesser casts his campaign as a community-building exercise, rather than a particularly partisan affair. “My family wasn’t very political per se, but was very community-oriented,” he explained. “I was very active in my synagogue in Springfield, MA., Sinai Temple. I was active in my synagogue youth group, which was a branch of NFTY. And that was one of my early paths into community work,” he said. One of Lesser’s first political acts was to work with his local community to successfully fight budget cuts for his high school in 2002. “I’m a proud Democrat, but I don’t particularly care if an idea comes from a Democrat, from a Republican, or from none of the above. My focus is on good ideas,” he said. “We didn’t even know what party the community members and the volunteers were, and we didn’t care. What we cared about was that we fought for a good idea.”

Both of Lesser’s parents worked their way through college in New York–his father as a taxi driver–and became professionals in Holyoke, MA. Lesser’s goal is “to give more families that kind of opportunity”–to enable others to live the success story of his own family’s rise into the middle class. At the moment, however, he is still in listening mode. He intends to release “a variety of new innovative policy proposals.” Until then, he’s demurring on hot button issues like the role of charter schools, which has split progressives across the country, and pitted his former boss President Obama against liberal leaders like New York Mayor Bill de Blasio. “My goal now is to listen to people, and to make sure I’m hearing from all people in the district, regardless of party or position.”

In the end, Lesser’s hope for his political career is simple. “My background in Judaism is there’s no greater work than tikkun olam, and that’s always been a very strong part of my identity and my motivating force,” he said. “The idea is that you work in some small way to try to leave things a little better off than how you found them.”

BOSTON (JTA) — One of Israel’s wealthiest businessmen – Idan Ofer – made a gift to the Harvard Kennedy School to establish the Sammy Ofer graduate fellowship for emerging leaders in Israel and Palestine – his late father – Sammy Offer – was a world class shipping magnate.

The donation made by Idan Ofer in his father’s memory will provide full tuition and other financial support to up to four students annually to attend the Kennedy School, which specializes in global diplomacy. Harvard would not disclose the amount of the donation but described it as generous.

The first fellows are expected to begin in 2014.

Sammy Ofer died in 2011 at age 89. He was one of Israel’s wealthiest businessmen, a global shipping magnate and philanthropist whose international shipping operation grew into one of the largest privately held fleets in the world. In 2007, he donated $25 million to Israel’s Rambam hospital in Haifa.

Idan Ofer, whose net worth is estimated by Forbes at $6.5 billion, said in a statement that the scholarship would have resonated with his father.

“He was a great believer in the importance of education and strong core values in leadership, particularly in the Middle East where generational and political change is taking place,” he said.
David T. Ellwood, dean of the Kennedy School, said, “The Kennedy School is a unique environment where students with disparate views and life experiences convene both in and out of the classroom to learn, study, and think seriously about some of the world’s most intractable problems, and Mr. Ofer’s gift fits perfectly with our mission.”

The Kennedy School’s Middle East program is headed by R. Nicholas Burns, who served as under-secretary of state from 2005 through 2008, and served as consul general to Israel in the mid-1980s.

Gina McCarthy testified before a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing on her nomination to be administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency on Capitol Hill in Washington and President Barack Obama made a plea this week for the U.S. Senate to confirm his choice to head the agency that will oversee the core of his new climate change plan, but nominee Gina McCarthy’s prospects seem increasingly in doubt.
McCarthy was nominated by Obama in March to lead the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency where she is currently the top air quality official.

She has yet to receive a vote in the full U.S. Senate after narrowly being approved by the Senate Committee for the Environment and Public Works on a party-line vote.

In his speech Tuesday laying out a climate action plan, Obama said McCarthy was well qualified for the job and has bipartisan credentials. The Senate should confirm her “without any further obstruction or delay,” Obama said.

McCarthy has worked for several Republican governors, including 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney when he was governor of Massachusetts. She was seen by many as a choice that could work with lawmakers from both parties.

But many Republicans are bitterly against proposed new regulations from the EPA on coal-fired power plants and could seek to block McCarthy’s confirmation.

“Sad to say, but I think (Obama) may have effectively sacrificed her confirmation,” said Manik Roy, vice president for strategic outreach for the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions.

McCarthy has received public support from industry representatives and environmental groups alike for her ability to navigate political divisions.

Roy and other analysts have said opposition to her confirmation has less to do with her and more to do with ideological opposition to regulation.

Republican Senator Roy Blount maintains a hold on her nomination over a river project in his state, while members of the Senate environmental committee continue to press McCarthy and the EPA over the transparency of the agency’s emails and the economic analysis that goes into its rulemaking.

Reaction by some Senate Republicans to Obama’s climate plan signal a tough fight for McCarthy.

Republican Senator John Barrasso said regulations targeting coal-powered plants will strangle the economy. And he suggested McCarthy had lied when asked at her confirmation hearing in April about the agency’s plans to regulate existing power plants.

“The agency is not currently developing any existing source greenhouse gas regulations for power plants,” McCarthy told the panel.

Speaking on the Senate floor, Barrasso said, “She has recently reported to the Senate that the things the president is talking about today are things she has known nothing about. So either she was ignorant about what’s going on at EPA, a place where she’s been an assistant director for the last four years, or she is arrogant.

“Either way, I think this tarnishes her chances of being approved by the Senate, tarnishes her nomination.”

Senator Barbara Boxer, the Democrat who chairs the environment panel, told reporters last week that she will lead a public campaign for McCarthy.

Roy said that even if the current acting administrator, Bob Perciasepe, stays on in his role, McCarthy will be able to take the lead on Obama’s climate agenda.

Allison Macfarlane, another member of Obama’s energy team, was confirmed by the Senate on Thursday to a full term as chairwoman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which she has led since July 2012.

The Union of Concerned Scientists is organizing a public forum webcasted live from the University of California, Los Angeles on July 25. This forum will convene leading thinkers and key stakeholders for a candid discussion on how the best available science can help communities make informed decisions on hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) amidst the current expansion in drilling for shale oil and gas across the United States.

The line-up of speakers and a detailed program will be known soon. But as space is limited for this distinctive event,
UCS supporters have the opportunity for early event registration to join via webcast.

The rapid growth in fracking is driving many communities to make decisions on fracking without access to comprehensive and reliable scientific information of the potential impacts on their air and water quality, community health, and economic well-being. The forum will provide a unique opportunity to learn from experts, decision makers, and community leaders about the state of the science around fracking, the state and federal policy landscape, and what citizens and policy makers need to know to make informed decisions about whether, and under what conditions, to extract oil and gas using fracking.

The event is one of a series of Branscomb Forums organized by the Center for Science and Democracy to address constraints on the roles of science, evidence-based decision making, and constructive debate in American public discourse and public policy. Knowing that California is on the cutting edge of technologies and policies to reduce fossil fuel use and a frontline in the debate over fracking for oil, we are excited to host this event in partnership with the UCLA School of Law.

Boston suspects’ mother in terrorism database since 2011

This April 25, 2013 file photo shows Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, left, the mother of the two Boston bombing suspects, speaking at a news conference in Makhachkala, the capital of the southern Russian province of Dagestan. At right is her sister-in-law Maryam. (photo credit: AP Photo/Musa Sadulayev, File)

BOSTON (AP) — Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhohkar Tsarnaev was moved from a hospital to a federal prison medical center, while FBI agents searched for evidence Friday in a landfill near the college he was attending.

Tsarnaev, 19, was taken from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where he was recovering from a gunshot wound to the throat and other injuries suffered during a getaway attempt, and transferred to the Federal Medical Center Devens, about 40 miles from Boston, the US Marshals Service said. The facility at a former Army base treats federal prisoners.

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and CNN writes about the statement by an unnamed US official:

Russian authorities intercepted a communication in 2011 between the mother of the accused Boston Marathon bombers and someone who may have been one of her sons “discussing jihad,” a U.S. official with knowledge of the investigation told CNN’s Susan Candiotti.

The Russians turned over their intercept of the conversation — which the official described as vague — to the FBI only in the past few days, the official said.

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and a Canadian Professor reviewing the stand at the UN of an American who has been seriously discredited in the past but continues to be employed by the UN:

This article by Anne Bayefsky originally appeared today on Breitbart.com.

UN Human Rights Council “expert” Richard Falk has published a statement saying Bostonians got what they deserved in last week’s terror attack. He quotes W.H. Auden to make his point: “to whom evil is done/do evil in return.”

Richard Falk is the UN’s “Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.” He has held the post since 2008, despite exposure as a 9/11 conspiracy theorist.

In his latest rant, published online on April 21, 2013 by foreignpolicyjournal.com. Falk repeats the libel that prior to 9/11 President George W. Bush was seeking a “pretext” for war, and that anything Israel is the opposite of “justice and peace.”

And then he attacks Bostonians head-on. The police action in Boston was a “hysterical dragnet.” Boston’s dead were “canaries” that “have to die” because of America’s “fantasy of global domination.”

Falk explains the attacks as justifiable “resistance.” In his words: “The American global domination project is bound to generate all kinds of resistance in the post-colonial world.”

He minimizes the crime and predicts worse if America doesn’t change its ways to better accommodate the demands of “the Islamic world.” As he puts it: “In some respects, the United States has been fortunate not to experience worse blowbacks, and these may yet happen…”.

For years, Falk has been espousing the worst forms of antisemitism from his UN perch, and for his efforts has been rewarded with repeated opportunities by the Council to lecture others on his world view.

That world view is shared by the 56 member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), who only a week ago at UN Headquarters refused to define terrorism unless an exception clause was created for “legitimate struggle.”

The OIC controls the balance of power at the UN’s top human rights body, by holding majorities in both the African and Asian regional groups. Africa and Asia, in turn, control 26 of the 47 seats on the Council. With the backing of the OIC, therefore, Falk has been encouraged and protected.

The Obama administration has long championed the UN Human Rights Council, which it decided to join as one of its first foreign policy moves in 2009. Thanks to the Obama administration, U.S. began a second three-year term on the Council this past January. At the opening of the Council’s most recent session in March, Assistant Secretary of State Esther Brimmer traveled to Geneva to address what she called “this esteemed body.”

There is nothing about a “human rights” body that countenances the likes of Richard Falk that is “esteemed,” and the United States should resign–effective immediately.

Anne Bayefsky is director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust. Follow her @AnneBayefsky.

Glenn Greenwald, Guardian UKGreenwald writes: “The overarching principle here should be that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is entitled to a presumption of innocence until he is actually proven guilty. As so many cases have proven … people who appear to be guilty based on government accusations and trials-by-media are often completely innocent. Media-presented evidence is no substitute for due process and an adversarial trial.”READ MORE

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As Always, The UK Guardian has ideas for the US Legislators.

Why Does America Lose Its Head Over ‘Terror’ But Ignore Its Daily Gun Deaths?

By Michael Cohen, Guardian UK

22 April 2013

{ HERE AN UNDERSTATEMENT: }

The marathon bombs triggered a reaction that is at odds with last week’s inertia over arms control.

he thriving metropolis of Boston was turned into a ghost town on Friday. Nearly a million Bostonians were asked to stay in their homes – and willingly complied. Schools were closed; business shuttered; trains, subways and roads were empty; usually busy streets eerily resembled a post-apocalyptic movie set; even baseball games and cultural events were cancelled – all in response to a 19-year-old fugitive, who was on foot and clearly identified by the news media.

The actions allegedly committed by the Boston marathon bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his brother, Tamerlan, were heinous. Four people dead and more than 100 wounded, some with shredded and amputated limbs.

But Londoners, who endured IRA terror for years, might be forgiven for thinking that America over-reacted just a tad to the goings-on in Boston. They’re right – and then some. What we saw was a collective freak-out like few that we’ve seen previously in the United States. It was yet another depressing reminder that more than 11 years after 9/11 Americans still allow themselves to be easily and willingly cowed by the “threat” of terrorism.

After all, it’s not as if this is the first time that homicidal killers have been on the loose in a major American city. In 2002, Washington DC was terrorised by two roving snipers, who randomly shot and killed 10 people. In February, a disgruntled police officer, Christopher Dorner, murdered four people over several days in Los Angeles. In neither case was LA or DC put on lockdown mode, perhaps because neither of these sprees was branded with that magically evocative and seemingly terrifying word for Americans, terrorism.

To be sure, public officials in Boston appeared to be acting out of an abundance of caution. And it’s appropriate for Boston residents to be asked to take precautions or keep their eyes open. But by letting one fugitive terrorist shut down a major American city, Boston not only bowed to outsize and irrational fears, but sent a dangerous message to every would-be terrorist – if you want to wreak havoc in the United States, intimidate its population and disrupt public order, here’s your instruction booklet.

Putting aside the economic and psychological cost, the lockdown also prevented an early capture of the alleged bomber, who was discovered after Bostonians were given the all clear and a Watertown man wandered into his backyard for a cigarette and found a bleeding terrorist on his boat.

In some regards, there is a positive spin on this – it’s a reflection of how little Americans have to worry about terrorism. A population such as London during the IRA bombings or Israel during the second intifada or Baghdad, pretty much every day, becomes inured to random political violence. Americans who have such little experience of terrorism, relatively speaking, are more primed to overreact – and assume the absolute worst when it comes to the threat of a terror attack. It is as if somehow in the American imagination, every terrorist is a not just a mortal threat, but is a deadly combination of Jason Bourne and James Bond.

If only Americans reacted the same way to the actual threats that exist in their country. There’s something quite fitting and ironic about the fact that the Boston freak-out happened in the same week the Senate blocked consideration of a gun control bill that would have strengthened background checks for potential buyers. Even though this reform is supported by more than 90% of Americans, and even though 56 out of 100 senators voted in favour of it, the Republican minority prevented even a vote from being held on the bill because it would have allegedly violated the second amendment rights of “law-abiding Americans”.

So for those of you keeping score at home – locking down an American city: a proper reaction to the threat from one terrorist. A background check to prevent criminals or those with mental illness from purchasing guns: a dastardly attack on civil liberties. All of this would be almost darkly comic if not for the fact that more Americans will die needlessly as a result. Already, more than 30,000 Americans die in gun violence every year (compared to the 17 who died last year in terrorist attacks).

What makes US gun violence so particularly horrifying is how routine and mundane it has become. After the massacre of 20 kindergartners in an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, millions of Americans began to take greater notice of the threat from gun violence. Yet since then, the daily carnage that guns produce has continued unabated and often unnoticed.

The same day of the marathon bombing in Boston, 11 Americans were murdered by guns. The pregnant Breshauna Jackson was killed in Dallas, allegedly by her boyfriend. In Richmond, California, James Tucker III was shot and killed while riding his bicycle – assailants unknown. Nigel Hardy, a 13-year-old boy in Palmdale, California, who was being bullied in school, took his own life. He used the gun that his father kept at home. And in Brooklyn, New York, an off-duty police officer used her department-issued Glock 9mm handgun to kill herself, her boyfriend and her one-year old child.

At the same time that investigators were in the midst of a high-profile manhunt for the marathon bombers that ended on Friday evening, 38 more Americans – with little fanfare – died from gun violence. One was a 22-year old resident of Boston. They are a tiny percentage of the 3,531 Americans killed by guns in the past four months – a total that surpasses the number of Americans who died on 9/11 and is one fewer than the number of US soldiers who lost their lives in combat operations in Iraq. Yet, none of this daily violence was considered urgent enough to motivate Congress to impose a mild, commonsense restriction on gun purchasers.

It’s not just firearms that produce such legislative inaction. Last week, a fertiliser plant in West, Texas, which hasn’t been inspected by federal regulators since 1985, exploded, killing 14 people and injuring countless others. Yet many Republicans want to cut further the funding for the agency (OSHA) that is responsible for such reviews. The vast majority of Americans die from one of four ailments – cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and chronic lung disease – and yet Republicans have held three dozen votes to repeal Obamacare, which expands healthcare coverage to 30 million Americans.

It is a surreal and difficult-to-explain dynamic. Americans seemingly place an inordinate fear on violence that is random and unexplainable and can be blamed on “others” – jihadists, terrorists, evil-doers etc. But the lurking dangers all around us – the guns, our unhealthy diets, the workplaces that kill 14 Americans every single day – these are just accepted as part of life, the price of freedom, if you will. And so the violence goes, with more Americans dying preventable deaths. But hey, look on the bright side – we got those sons of bitches who blew up the marathon.

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WOULD IT NOT BE IN PLACE TO CHECK THE MENTAL HEALTH OF CANDIDATES FOR THE UN SENATE? HOW STRANGE THEIR VOTES OUGHT TO SEEM TO THE MAJORITY OF HONEST AND SANE PEOPLE OF THEIR CONSTITUENCIES?

THE FOLLOWING ARE ARTICLES THAT HINT TO THE AMOUNT OF DAMAGE CAUSED BY EASY-GET-YOUR-GUN AMERICA!

Related

Many of the wounded could face staggering bills not just for the trauma care they received in the days after the bombings, but for prosthetic limbs, lengthy rehabilitation and the equipment they will need to negotiate daily life with crippling injuries. Even those with health insurance may find that their plan places limits on specific services, like physical therapy or psychological counseling.

Kenneth R. Feinberg, the lawyer who has overseen compensation funds for victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the shootings at Virginia Tech and other disasters, arrived in Boston on Monday to start the difficult work of deciding who will be eligible for payouts from a new compensation fund and how much each person wounded in the bombings and family of the dead deserves.

The One Fund Boston, which Mayor Thomas M. Menino of Boston and Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts created a day after the bombings, has already raised more than $10 million for victims and their families. At the same time, friends and relatives have set up dozens of smaller funds for individual victims.

For at least 13 victims who lost limbs, including William White of Bolton, Mass., expenses may also include renovations to their homes that make it easier for them to get around.

“What if his stairs are at the wrong incline, or he needs a ramp, or the cobblestones in his backyard are uneven?” said Benjamin Coutu, a friend of the White family who helped create a donation page on a fund-raising Web site for Mr. White and his wife and son, who were also wounded in the blasts. “People who are insured in these situations think, ‘Wow, I’m O.K., I’m covered.’ It’s not until a month or two later that they realize, ‘I’m covered for the bare bones.’ ”

The overall medical costs are difficult to estimate, especially since it is not yet clear how much rehabilitation or future surgery the victims with the worst injuries will need. But as a basis for comparison, medical costs for shooting victims average about $50,000, said Ted Miller, a senior research scientist at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation who studies the costs of injuries.

For Mr. Feinberg, whom city and state officials asked to administer the One Fund Boston, the first task is to determine how much money is going to be available through it. Most donations typically arrive in the first month after a disaster, he said, adding that the fund-raising window should ideally be brief. “I’m a big believer, in most of these programs, that the fund should be a very small duration,” Mr. Feinberg said in a phone interview. “Because you’ve got to begin to get the money out the door to the people who really need it, and you’ve got to know how much you’re going to distribute.”

The thornier job, though, will be figuring out who qualifies for the funds and how much each victim who survived — as well as the families of the three who died — should receive. More than 170 people were wounded in the blasts, and more than 50 remain in the hospital.

Mr. Feinberg said that he would seek input from victims and their families before deciding on a formula. For victims of the Virginia Tech shooting, he said, compensation amounts were based on how long they were in the hospital. After the movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colo., victims who were paralyzed or suffered traumatic brain injuries received just as much as the families of those who died.

“You can’t pay everyone the same if someone has a broken ankle versus a brain injury,” he said. “There’s got to be some sliding scale.”

After the shootings in Aurora, some of the hospitals who treated victims agreed to limit what they charged and to waive charges entirely. Tim Gens, executive vice president of the Massachusetts Hospital Association, said that the hospitals treating the Boston victims had not yet discussed how to handle billing, but that it would be decided case by case.

For the uninsured, Mr. Gens said, Massachusetts has a charity care fund that covers all or part of their costs, depending on their income. Each hospital also has its own policies for waiving costs in certain situations, he said.

Meanwhile, Mr. Gens said, “For those who have insurance, there really shouldn’t be an issue.” Massachusetts requires most of its residents to have health insurance, although a small number refuse to comply or get waivers. It is not yet clear how many of the wounded were visiting from other states, or how many were uninsured.

“Massachusetts has been the leader of ‘let’s create health insurance for everyone,’ ” said Dr. Miller of the Pacific Institute.“So it will be very interesting to see how that plays out in terms of how the costs get borne.”

Charlie Baker, a former chief executive of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, one of the state’s largest insurers, predicted that given the circumstances, most insurance companies and employers would cover as much care as victims needed, regardless of what their policy allowed.

“If, say, they have a physical therapy benefit with an annual limit of 30 visits, I just don’t see a lot of employers saying, ‘Stick to the benefit,’ ” Mr. Baker said. “They’re going to say ‘go for it’ as long as the treatment is medically helpful.”

Rich Audsley, special adviser to a committee that helped distribute $5.4 million raised for victims in Aurora, said he wished there had been enough money to cover the needs of people who were not physically injured but suffered emotional trauma from witnessing the shootings or having victims die in their arms. Mr. Audsley said that he hoped some of the One Fund Boston money would go to community agencies that can provide counseling.

“We’re talking about emotional scars for many people that will be with them for the rest of their lives,” Mr. Audsley said.

Mr. Coutu, the family friend of some victims, said that while Mr. Feinberg figures out a formula for distributing money from the larger compensation fund, smaller fund-raising efforts could provide crucial interim help. The one for the White family has raised more than $55,000 so far.

“The great thing about these sorts of micro-fundraisers is they can access the funds immediately,” Mr. Coutu said. “This is theirs.”

After the 9/11 attacks, Mr. Feinberg compensated victims’ families by calculating the likely lifetime earnings of the dead. He won praise for his handling of the fund, which was created by Congress and paid more than $7 billion in taxpayer funds to more than 5,000 survivors and families of the dead. But it was an emotionally charged process.

“When people come to see me,” he said of disaster victims and their families, “I’d be better off with a divinity degree or a degree in psychiatry.”

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From Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts:

Pincas –

It’s a calm, quiet day in Boston today. It’s difficult to believe that such horror filled our streets only a week ago.

Two times, bombs rocked the streets of Copley Square. Three lives were taken that day, and a law enforcement officer was killed just three days later. More than 260 people were wounded, many of whom remain hospitalized with amputations and other scars of tragedy.

I’ve heard from folks across the country, asking what they can do to help. Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and Boston Mayor Tom Menino have formed a fund to help the people most affected by these tragic events.

During the Boston Marathon, everyone in our city cheers for each other. We help each other across the finish line. When terror struck, we acted as a family. Throughout the chaos, courageous people ran toward danger to help strangers in need.

Now we cry together. We pray together. We help each other.

No one can replace what we’ve lost here in Boston. But today, and in the weeks and months ahead, we’ll get through it together — through sorrow and anger, rehabilitation and recovery. That’s what families do.

The OFA family knows how to work together to accomplish amazing things. Let’s make a difference for the Boston Marathon victims.

From West, Texas to Watertown, Massachusetts, we remember and honor the men, women, and children we lost last week. We help those whose lives will never be the same. And we thank our first responders, medical professionals, law enforcement officers, and National Guard for their heroic work.

I’m very proud of the people of Massachusetts for their strength, resolve, and courage. Bostonians are tough.

We are fighters — and we cannot be broken.

No matter where you live, thank you for being with us in our time of crisis and our time of healing. We run together.

Though condemning the Boston Marathon bombings in which 3 people were killed and more than 100 wounded, Iran also criticized U.S. drone attacks in the Middle East. Some online Jihadis expressed happiness over the Boston attack. Photo: Wikimedia Commons via Aaron Tang.

Several Boston hospitals have been thrust into the spotlight with recent events in that city, and along with them so too have the medical staffs. Everyone wants to know how they have so successfully responded to a crisis of such proportions. The answer to some extent is this: Israel.

Aish.com recently interviewed Dr. Alasdair Conn, Chief of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Massachusetts General. He described how Israeli doctors played a prime role in the successful medical response following last week’s terror attack.

Collaboration began after 9/11 when staff at Massachusetts General realized they wouldn’t be prepared for an attack of that magnitude closer to home.

“We could manage to treat patients from a multiple car crash – with three or four or five patients – pretty well,” recalls Dr. Alasdair Conn, Chief of the Department of Emergency Medicine, “but what would happen if we had many more patients, simultaneously and with very little warning?”

Dr. Conn and his colleagues looked to Israel for advice, and turned to Dr. Pinchas Halpern, Chief of the Emergency Department at Tel Aviv Medical Center. A world-renowned expert on trauma care, Dr. Halpern had helped make Tel Aviv’s Sourasky Medical Center one of the world’s leaders in emergency medicine.

Halpern came over in 2005, when Israel was experiencing a wave of terror attacks. For the doctors at Massachusetts General, the visit would prove tremendously important 8 years later. “To this day I remember a comment,” Dr. Conn recalls. “One of the Israelis said that here in the United States we have a terrorist event every few years, but ‘unfortunately, in Israel,’ he said, ‘we have a situation where a bomb is put on a bus once every three weeks. We have no notice, and we get 50 or 60 or 70 casualties with no warning.’”

Logistics was a focal point of the training process. Israeli doctors taught their American colleagues lessons they’d learned in organizing responses to large-scale disasters. “Only a small part of dealing with such an event is medical, much of it is logistical,” Tel Aviv’s Dr. Halpern explained.

He and his colleagues developed a unique triage system, moving casualties indoors as soon as possible and streamlining processes to make it more rapid. “We did away with a lot of the structure that was in the textbook that was never really tested,” Dr. Halpern said. They developed protocols like doing extra CT scanning to detect small pieces of shrapnel from bombs designed to cause maximum damage.

Israeli trauma doctors had learned to alter their lab testing procedures, to streamline the way they identified victims after terror attacks, and to not discharge blast victims right away, because often their injuries don’t show symptoms until later. Mass. General’s Dr. Paul Biddinger noted that “we improved our plans for triage, site security, reassessment and inter-specialty coordination” after consulting with the Israelis.

Another lesson the Israelis learned was to call up large numbers of staff as soon as the hospital hears of a terrorist attacks in case they are needed. This proved particularly beneficial last week.

“As soon as we heard about the blasts we didn’t let any anesthesiologists or general or trauma surgeons or pediatricians leave the hospital,” said ER head Dr. Alasdair Conn. “We learned that from the Israelis. I remember walking through the emergency department two hours after the bomb victims arrived. Many of the acute patients had already been moved, and it looked like there were more staff than patients in the ER. If there had been a third or a fourth bomb that day – we could have managed.”

Over 30 blast victims arrived at the hospital following last Monday’s attack. Each victim had their own dedicated team attending to them.

“We’re not smarter than other doctors,” Dr. Halpern told Aish.com. “But we have two things going for us. One, unfortunately, is the high level of terrorism Israel faces. The other factor is Israel’s advanced medical system. In general, countries with lots of terrorism have a lower level of academic research and writing; countries with sophisticated medical systems have lower levels of terrorism. Israel combines both.”

Noting that Israelis had been first on the scene at disasters across the globe, Dr. Halpern said, “We can help, so we feel we have a moral obligation. We respond very quickly and efficiently. We think out of the box, not dogmatically, and we are often first on the scene… There’s a very strong sense to apply the skills we’ve gained morally. I choose to live in Israel in the face of much adversity, and I believe it is incumbent upon us as Jews and Israelis to help whomever we can.”

“When we were preparing for mass casualties we realized the Israelis had the expertise in this type of situation,” Dr. Conn said, “and we turned to them. This week it really paid off.”

The surviving suspect in last week’s Boston Marathon bombings, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, “will not be treated as an enemy combatant” – but rather will be prosecuted “through our civilian system of justice,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said today. “Under U.S. law, United States citizens cannot be tried in military commissions,” he said.

“The suspect made an initial appearance in the hospital room in front of a federal magistrate judge,” Circuit Executive Gary Wente tells CNN. The complaint is under seal, Wente said. This initial appearance does not constitute an arraignment.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been charged in federal court with use of a weapon of mass destruction and malicious destruction of property resulting in death.

The statutory charges authorize a penalty, upon conviction, of death or imprisonment for life or any term of years, according to a statement from the Department of Justice.

A moment of silence will be observed at 2:50 p.m. ET today, exactly a week after the twin explosions near the marathon’s finish line that killed three and injured more than 170 others.

Boston bombings suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev conveyed to investigators that no international terrorist groups were behind the attacks, a U.S. government source told CNN’s Jake Tapper.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev indicated his older brother, Tamerlan, was the driving force behind the attacks and wanted to defend Islam from attack, the source said.

The 19-year-old was “alert, mentally competent and lucid,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Marianne Bowler found during a brief initial court appearance in Tsarnaev’s hospital room. During the hearing, he communicated mostly by nodding his head.

Glenn Greenwald | What Rights Should Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Get?Glenn Greenwald, Guardian UKGreenwald writes: “Once Tsarnaev was arrested, President Obama strongly suggested that he would eventually be tried in court, which presumably means he will at some point have a lawyer.”READ MORE

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How Much Civil Liberty Should We Give Up?Emily Bazelon, Slate MagazineBazelon writes: “It’s been reassuring to hear few calls for constricting civil liberties in the name of national security. Is that about to change, as information pours in about the foreign and Muslim background of the accused bombers?”READ MORE

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Immigration and Fear.The New York Times | EditorialExcerpt: “Much of the country was still waking up to the mayhem and confusion outside Boston on Friday morning when Senator Charles Grassley decided to link the hunt for terrorist bombers to immigration reform.”READ MORE

How we shift America off oil:America’s auto industry is in the midst of a change for the better. Right now, car dealers are offering customers twice as many hybrids as they were five years ago and seven times as many cars that can go 40 miles or more on a gallon of gas. Last year, General Motors sold more hybrid cars than ever before and Ford is working hard to keep up with demand for its fuel-efficient vehicles.

That trend is a key example of how innovation helps to drive business success — and creates jobs for the middle class in America. But it’s one thing to make a car more fuel efficient. It’s another thing altogether to move cars and trucks off oil entirely.

At a time when the sequester is forcing laboratories and science facilities across the country to scale back on their work, we need to keep investing in research.

Because if we can meet this goal, the benefits are clear. We’ll help diminish the burden of spiking gas prices. We’ll reduce our reliance on foreign oil. And most importantly, the kind of technological breakthroughs the Energy Security Trust will work to produce won’t just create jobs — they could create whole new industries.

So if you think the Energy Security Trust is a good idea, will you share this graphic?

THE FOLLOWING IS A COLLAGE OF ARTICLES FROM TODAY’S NEW YORK TIMES THAT POINT AT MORE DISCORD IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES AND THE LIBERAL’S HOPE THAT PRESIDENT OBAMA WILL REFUSE TO PLAY BALL WITH THEM. IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT LIBERAL-REPUBLICANS REBRAND AND FORM THEIR INDEPENDENT RANKS IN THEIR OWN INTEREST AND IN THE NATIONS INTEREST.

TOP NEWS

By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and JACKIE CALMES

Even as Republicans vow to leverage the federal borrowing limit in their demands for spending cuts, President Obama, who signed the tax bill Wednesday, says he won’t join in more charged talks on the issue.

Letters

Sandy Flood Insurance Aid Bill Sails Through House After Outcry.

Posted: 01/04/2013 11:54 am EST | Updated: 01/04/2013 12:25

A $9.7 billion bill to pay flood insurance claims from Hurricane Sandy sailed through the House on Friday with an overwhelming bipartisan majority, just two days after Republican officials in New York and New Jersey exploded in outrage after a much larger relief bill failed to come up for a vote before the end of the last Congress.

Friday’s 354-67 vote extends the borrowing authority of the National Flood Insurance Program, which the Federal Emergency Management Agency warned on Tuesday was set to run out of money next week without additional funds from Congress. If the mandatory insurance program went broke, payments on more than 115,000 claims from Sandy would be delayed, the agency said.

The flood insurance measure now goes to the Senate, which easily approved a $60 billion Sandy aid package in late December that leaders in the Republican-controlled House declined to bring to the floor.

Another vote is set for Jan. 15 on an additional $51 billion in Sandy aid, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said. That aid covers a wide range of needs related to the storm, including funds for financially-strained municipalities struggling with the recovery. More than half a million homes and business were destroyed or damaged in New Jersey and New York by Sandy, according to official estimates. New York City also suffered at least 11.7 billion in damage to its subway system and other infrastructure.

While the flood insurance measure had overwhelming support from both parties, Democratic legislators from New York and New Jersey on Friday continued to harshly criticize GOP leaders for the long delay in approving a comprehensive relief package for storm victims.

“It is a shame and an embarrassment for this institution that the House Republican leadership continues playing games with this essential assistance,” said Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-N.Y.), who represents parts of New York City devastated by the storm.

“Today we are taking care of flood insurance. What about small business? The job creators in our community? They are getting nothing,” Velazquez added.

Many Republicans from the Northeast who blasted the decision by GOP leaders to scrap the vote on the original aid bill appeared largely appeased by Friday’s vote and the scheduled vote on the broader aid package later this month.

“While it is unfortunately long overdue, I am pleased that we are finally here to help,” said Rep. Jon Runyan, (R-N.J.), whose district includes parts of coastal New Jersey hard-hit by Sandy.

Some Republican members took to the floor to defend the decision not to bring the broader relief package up for a vote, saying the $60 billion Senate relief bill contained millions of dollars of spending unrelated to the storm.

“We need to get the pork out,” said Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight Committee.

But Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), a powerful House Republican who represents New York’s Long Island, which sustained billions of dollars in storm damage, refuted those claims. “The House bill never contained any of those extraneous provisions,” he said.

King was among the fiercest critics of the GOP leadership for scrapping the aid vote earlier in the week, calling it a “cruel knife in the back” to the Northeast and urging his constituents not to donate to the Republican Party.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) said on Wednesday that the failure to vote on the aid bill was the result of “toxic internal politics” in the Republican Party. He added that he would have a hard time trusting Boehner and other national party officials after the “duplicity” surrounding the dropping of the earlier aid vote. Christie did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“Americans are tired of the palace intrigue and political partisanship of this Congress,” Christie said. “Disaster relief was something that you didn’t play games with.”

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GOP freshmen: Even more tea party than 2010?

The Republican freshmen sworn into Congress this week might be even more tea party than the Tea Party Class of 2010.

The tea party influence on last year’s primaries wasn’t as big a story as it was two years prior, as the label lost its luster and the rallies stopped. But the anti-establishment fervor of that movement lives on in the crop of 35 Republicans joining the House.

And in fact, it may even be ratcheted up.

Tea party freshman Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-Okla.) voted against John Boehner for speaker on Thursday and against a Hurricane Sandy aid bill on Friday. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

In the end, 67 House Republicans voted against it. Of those 67, 19 came from the freshman class, compared to 22 who came from the Class of 2010.

Pretty close, huh? Well, when you consider that the 2012 class (35 Republicans) is less than half the size of the 2010 class (84 Republicans), things begin to come into focus.

In fact, while just more than one-quarter of 2010ers voted against the Sandy aid bill, more than half of 2012ers voted no. And while freshmen make up less than 15 percent of the GOP caucus, they comprised nearly 30 percent of the no votes.

Make no mistake: Even as the tea party isn’t as much of a thing any more, its ideals and anti-establishment attitude very much remain in today’s Republican Party and House GOP caucus.

And if the first votes of the 113th Congress are any indication, incoming members will continue to vote the tea party line — perhaps in even higher numbers than their tea party predecessors. Which make Boehner’s job very, very difficult going forward.

Who voted against Boehner for speaker and why?

Twelve Republicans voted against John Boehner’s second term as speaker Thursday, making for a very tense final few minutes of the vote.

At one point, in fact, the number either voting for someone else or not voting reached into the high teens, raising the possibility that Boehner wouldn’t secure a majority on the first ballot. Eventually, a few of those who hadn’t voted — including Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) — cast their ballots for Boehner.

And now a look at the Democrats who voted against Nancy Pelosi for speaker. Basically all of them are Blue Dog Democrats.And we would note that the defections are far less than the 20 who didn’t vote for Pelosi in 2011.

California Law Tests Company Responses to Carbon Costs.

LOS BANOS, Calif. — The Morning Star Company’s three plants in California emit roughly 200,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year — about the same amount as the Pacific Island nation of Palau — as they turn tomatoes into ketchup, spaghetti sauce and juice used by millions of consumers around the world.

Ramin Rahimian for The New York TimesA Morning Star tomato processing plant in Los Banos, Calif. Morning Star and 350 other companies statewide will begin paying for carbon emissions on Jan. 1.

Beginning Jan. 1, under the terms of a groundbreaking California environmental law known as AB 32, Morning Star and 350 other companies statewide will begin paying for those emissions, which trap heat and contribute to global warming.

Companies are trying to figure out how this will affect their bottom lines and have lobbied state regulators to minimize the costs. In the meantime they are weighing their options. Should they stay and adapt or move operations elsewhere? Should they retrofit and innovate to reduce emissions? Should they swallow the regulatory costs or pass them on to customers?

Each company’s calculus depends on its particular circumstance. Morning Star, a top producer in a $926 million industry, has to be near the tomato fields of California’s Central Valley, so relocating was never an option. Its biggest question is how to handle the extra costs.

About 600 facilities with hefty emissions are covered by the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. Oil refiners, electric utilities and cement makers, whose greenhouse-gas output totals in the millions of metric tons annually, are the biggest. But over all, dozens of industries are affected.

In recent months, as the start date of the new cap-and-trade program neared, California regulators have fine-tuned the rules, industry by industry, to avoid imposing severe economic hardship while trying to keep the rules stringent. It is a delicate balance. Regulators do not want California companies to lose their competitive edge, because that could make other state governments reluctant to adopt this approach.

Cement plants near Los Angeles compete with plants across the Arizona border. State tomato processors control more than 95 percent of the American market, but they fear that the fast-growing Chinese sector could make inroads.

Officials in affected industries acknowledge they are struggling with how to proceed. As Meredith Fowlie, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, explained, “Their calculations have to be that we either sit here and emit and pay the cost of doing so, or alternatively we can look at options” like paying for major capital improvements to reduce emissions.

The state’s Air Resources Board is using an array of policies to reach its intended goal of reducing emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. It has tried to structure the cap-and-trade program to encourage industry investment in energy efficiency that could cut costs as well as lower emissions. Investing in energy efficiency may make sense for companies under California’s rules, Dr. Fowlie said, “but if they are making them before their competitors, that could be fatal.”

The rules are relatively simple for producers like Morning Star. At the end of 2014, they must present state-issued allowances — one per metric ton of emissions — for the greenhouse gases they emitted in 2013.

For the 200,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emitted annually by Morning Star’s three plants, the company is being awarded about 192,500 free allowances the first year; the company must buy the remainder on the open market. In the first allowance auction in November, the allowance price settled at $10.09 a ton, meaning in the first year Morning Star has to pay roughly $75,000 to cover its emissions.

But over the next five years, the number of free allowances will decrease sharply to encourage further emissions cuts. At current rates, that means Morning Star will have to buy 100,000 allowances for both 2017 and 2018, by which time the prices may have doubled or tripled in an open market. The company estimates the law will cost it an extra $20 million over the next seven years.

Nick Kastle, a company spokesman, said it would almost certainly pass on the new costs to makers of ketchup and frozen pizza, which would be likely to share the extra costs with consumers. “People nationwide are going to be affected by AB 32,” he said.

But many economists said they think such a cost-centric analysis ignores the jobs and economic activity that the law could generate. Emission and efficiency standards for cars, buildings and appliances in California over the last four decades have succeeded in cleaning the air, making residents’ per-capita energy use rate among the lowest in the country and spurring innovations and new industries, like the one that arose around catalytic converters.

“It’s almost a Darwinian point,” said Matthew Kahn, an economist at the University of California, Los Angeles. While some companies’ costs will no doubt rise, he said, the law creates moneymaking opportunities by forcing a rethinking of industrial processes.

For some industries, the options are limited. Cement cannot be made without releasing carbon dioxide as a byproduct, although engineers are trying to reduce the amount emitted. At least one new California company is experimenting with a process that captures and stores carbon that would otherwise be emitted.

Morning Star, praised for its management innovations, has also won respect for improving its energy efficiency through equipment retrofits over the years. “If you have any ideas for efficiency,” Mr. Kastle said, “we’ll look at them.”

“We deploy what we believe, based on the economics, are the most efficient tomato-processing facilities in the world,” he said in an interview at the company’s plant in Los Banos. “And there are only two major costs in producing tomato paste: tomatoes and energy.”

He was standing at the center of the plant’s steaming Emerald City-like pipes and towers, beneath a network of artificial watercourses along which 838 tons of bobbing, colorful fruit move through the factory each hour in harvest season.

To run the conveyor system and to heat and sterilize the product, the plant uses five boilers, the newest of which is four years old and the oldest, 30. Replacing a boiler costs millions of dollars.

Mr. Kastle said Morning Star’s margins are too slim to absorb new regulatory costs. But he also worries about the consequence of passing them on. He knows that the California garlic industry lost half its market to Chinese imports in less than a decade, and notes that China’s tomato-processing industry is on the rise.

The Air Resources Board is also wary of this competitive situation, which is why it has been flexible about adjusting its regulation.

Steven Cliff, the California regulator most familiar with food processing, said that companies need the free allocations in the early years. “In a global marketplace you can’t pass along all of your costs,” he said.

More allocations go to industries that are at risk of leaving the state and emitting their pollution elsewhere or of ceding market share to foreign companies that are likely to be big emitters. The term of art for the problem is “leakage.” The more leakage, the less effective the California law will be at reducing greenhouse gas emissions over all.

State regulators consider cement manufacturers highly vulnerable to leaving the state, and food processors moderately vulnerable; both have been granted additional allowances to ease the transition.

For many economists, the crucial issue for now is not emissions but the creation of a viable market that sets a price on carbon. “The bottom line of what we’re trying to achieve here is a stable, predictable price of carbon,” said Frank A. Wolak, a Stanford economist. “If it’s a stable price, people are more likely to say, ‘I’ll make the investment because at this price it is going to save me money.’ ”

For now, Morning Star plans to stay here and pass on the new costs. Whether that changes the dynamics of its market is anyone’s guess.

President Obama used his weekly Saturday address to repeat his impassioned but vague call to take “meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this,” some gun control advocates said they hoped the shooting would be a catalyst for change.

“We genuinely believe that this one is different,” Dan Gross, the president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said in an interview on Saturday. “It’s different because no decent human being can look at a tragedy like this and not be outraged by the fact that it can happen in our nation. And because this time, we’re really poised to harness that outrage and create a focused and sustained outcry for change.”

But supporters of gun control sounded similar notes after other recent mass shootings — including one early last year in Tucson in which six people were killed and Representative Gabrielle Giffords was wounded — only to see little or no action. And as governors condemned the Connecticut shooting and expressed sympathy for its victims, their statements, from Democrats and Republicans alike, were more likely to mention prayer than gun laws.

That same day, Ohio lawmakers passed a bill that would allow guns in cars at the Statehouse garage. Earlier in the week, a federal appeals court struck down a ban on carrying concealed weapons in Illinois. And Florida officials announced that they would soon issue their millionth concealed weapon and firearm license — or, as a state news release put it, the program would be “One Million Strong.”

Exception was in Colorado, which had started a debate on gun laws earlier in the week. Gov. John W. Hickenlooper, a Democrat, had said on Wednesday that he believed “the time is right” for state lawmakers to consider new gun restrictions.

Mr. Hickenlooper, who had appeared cool to the idea immediately after the shooting at a movie theater in Aurora that killed 12 people and wounded dozens, said he hoped lawmakers would take up the issue in the next legislative session, when Democrats will control both houses.

“After the shootings happened in Aurora in July, everyone was just so empty that it didn’t feel appropriate to start talking about racing right into the sometimes contentious arguments of appropriate gun control or inappropriate gun control, depending on which side of the fence you’re on,” Mr. Hickenlooper said Saturday. He added that he hoped lawmakers would examine issues like public access to assault weapons, magazines that hold a great deal of ammunition and armor-piercing bullets, and how the state can help the mentally ill and keep them from doing harm.

With gun control efforts seen as unlikely in Washington, where the Republicans who control the House oppose them, the next frontiers of the debate may be in states like Michigan, where the bill that would allow people to carry concealed weapons in school is being weighed by Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican.

Don Wotruba, the deputy director of the Michigan Association of School Boards, said the group was calling on the governor to veto the bill. “Putting children in closer proximity with more guns is a risk that shouldn’t be taken,” he said in an interview.

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The massacre at the Sandy Hook Elementary School has finally grabbed the Nation’s attention – something that Hurricane Sandy did not do.

The Republicans blame their loss in the Presidential elections on the Hurricane and we find no evidence that this was the case – but we say that had the elections been held today instead, they might have been wiped out – just a Sandy closer to home.

Today’s Sunday TV programs all dealt with the woman that collected guns and made them accessible to her sick-genius son.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, on Meet the Press, said that he did put his money to work for candidates to Congress that were ready to take on the National Rifle Association. He explained that good laws and readiness to enforce them have reduced killings by guns in new York City to the point that it is now best in the country on the reduction of crime. He said it clearly – The Comforter in Chief is first The Commander in Chief and criticized the Preasident for not having put forward an actual plan to combat what is killing per year in the US more people then all the Vietnam War did in its time.

Bloomberg said that he decided to back President Obama only after he interviewed both – The President and Mr. Romney – and had the feeling that Obama knew what he has to do. But then, Obama did not go come up with a program to back up his rhetoric.

In New York City, if someone is found with a loaded concealed weapon – he gets an automatic 3.5 years.

THE PRESIDENT HAS IN HIS POWER TO ACT UPON WHAT HE TELLS THE PEOPLE THAT HE INTENDS TO DO. HE FIRST HAS TO TELL THE PEOPLE WHAT HE WANTS TO DO, AND THEN DO IT THROUGH EXECUTIVE ORDERS. My feeling was that Mayor Bloomberg, now an Independent, is ready to take the argument on a ride to the White House in 2016. He has the money and made it clear in public that he has the readiness. While the NRA’s only reason for existence in 2012 was to try to unseat President Obama, Bloombeg sees them weakened now to the point that an Obama who is not up for reelection anymore, ought to push Members of Congress to fight as if the NRA has no power over them – and indeed it does not anymore.

David Frum, who worked for President G.W. Bush said that when he grew up in Canada nobody there understood the US interest in weapons. Recently 300,000 people bought guns in one day in the US. 31 Senators for the Gun-lobby refused to speak on the Sunday programs – so they are stiff scared finally! This at a time that there is evidence that 40% of the guns sold in the US are sold at gun-shows or via the internet – no documents of any kind needed.

What is needed? For a starter something like a drivers’ license that requires tests of health (specifically mental health), a test of skills, and a minimum age. Also, clear understanding of spacial exclusions – like schools.

We would like to see Senator John Kerry take over the leadership in Congress and the fight against folks like Senator John McCain.

For first horn – President Obama ought to nominate Susan Rice for the Secretary of State position and fight for her; forget the leveling off on the taxation of the rich. The specter of a Middle East Bazaar bargaining between positions saying that rich is an income of one million/year or a quarter million/year are just unseemly. We would say that a special extra gun-control security tax would be fitting the present need as a clear add-on. We would then suggest that a similar add-on would qualify for climate-change effects as well because of the delayed action of dealing with the subject. Rich should be defined at the $150,000 level and taxed higher as the income is higher. Running a State is indeed the responsibility of those that were privileged to get a higher income as they got were they are mainly not by wins at the lottery, but because of the sweat of the great majority – the “others” that make up more then 95% of the Nation. PRESIDENT OBAMA IS NOW IN THIS POTENTIALLY UNCOMPROMISING POSITION BECAUSE OF THE CONFLUENCE OF OPPORTUNITIES THAT SHOULD NOT BE MISSED - HIS CLEAR INDEPENDENCE OF NEED TO BOW TO HIS DETRACTORS, AND THE DISASTERS OF SANDY & SANDY.

Poetic Justice: Romney to Finish Election at 47 Percent

writes: “When all the votes are counted, could Mitt Romney really end up achieving perfect poetic justice by finishing with 47 percent of the national vote? Yup.”

21 November 2012

hen all the votes are counted, could Mitt Romney really end up achieving perfect poetic justice by finishing with 47 percent of the national vote? Yup. Dave Wasserman of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report says new votes in from Maryland put Romney at 47.56 percent. He predicts with certainty that with all of New York and California counted, Romney will end up below 47.5 percent of the vote.

Rounded, of course, that would put the final tally at 51-47. Anticipating this moment, Markos Moulitsas has inaugurated the ‘Romney 47 percent watch.

At risk of piling on, a 47 percent finish would represent a perfect conclusion to the Romney political saga. If Romney ran a campaign of unprecedented dishonesty and lack of transparency, virtually all of it was geared towards misleading people about the true nature of his – and his party’s – actual beliefs and governing agenda. This was the case on multiple fronts, from Romney’s dissembling about the size of the tax cut he’d give to the rich, to his evasions about the overhaul he and Paul Ryan planned for the safety net, to the obscuring of the massive upward redistribution of wealth represented by the Ryan agenda – the GOP’s central governing blueprint for nation’s fiscal and economic future.

It was fitting that Romney himself unmasked his own apparent beliefs and the broader ideological implications of the larger GOP agenda and the ideas driving it – in private remarks to those who would likely benefit from his policies most. As Jonathan Chait put it at the time:

This is not a random gaffe, a joke gone bad, or even a terrible brain freeze. It is Romney exposed for espousing a worldview that is at the heart of his party’s mania. The idea he summed up at that fund-raiser was a combination of right-wing fever dreams …the Ayn Randism, the fact-free class warfare, the frantic rage at a changing America. The Republican Party is going down because its candidate was seen advocating exactly the beliefs that make the party so dangerous and repellant.

Romney’s widely criticized post-election remarks – in which he claimed Obama won by giving core Dem constituencies gifts – were essentially a reprise of the 47 percent remarks. Romney reiterated in overly blunt terms what many Republicans and conservatives have been saying for years – and got disemboweled by his own party after detailing these views out loud, a fitting coda to his candidacy.

And consider the numbers themselves. The Romney victory was always based on the hope that a whiter-than-2008 electorate would ensure that Obama’s victory was a demographic fluke. Yet Obama’s constituencies – many of whom make up Romney’s fabled 47 percent – turned out to add up to the majority, confirming that these ongoing changes are real and inexorable, a sign of what America is really becoming. If Romney’s described electorate – the job creators and the makers of America who were supposed to be enraged at all the moochers and the takers – ends up totalling 47 percent, we will have come full circle.

Davenport, Iowa (CNN) – Mitt Romney spoke Monday with officials from the Federal Emergency Management Administration and the National Weather Service as Hurricane Sandy slammed into the U.S. East Coast.

Romney joined the representatives from the agencies, as well as officials from the Department of Homeland Security, on a 20-minute phone call at 4 p.m. ET while the GOP nominee was in Davenport, Iowa for an event, according to campaign spokesman Kevin Madden.

The presidential candidate received updates on the progress of the Category 1 hurricane, as well as the status of federal, state and local disaster relief efforts, Madden said. Romney was further briefed on the potential effects to states and communities in the storm’s immediate aftermath.

Romney’s comments about FEMA, made at a CNN Republican primary debate in June 2011, received renewed attention Monday. At the time, Romney said he favored states taking on a large role in disaster relief. “Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction,” he said.

Asked Monday whether Romney held the same position he did at the June 2011 debate, Romney campaign spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg explained the candidate believes “states should be in charge of emergency management in responding to storms and other natural disasters in their jurisdictions.”

“As the first responders, states are in the best position to aid affected individuals and communities, and to direct resources and assistance to where they are needed most,” Henneberg said. “This includes help from the federal government and FEMA.”

While Romney canceled his campaign plans in Virginia on Sunday, in addition to an event in Wisconsin Monday night, he still held a rally in Iowa Monday. The campaign said the event was attended by 2,250 people, according to a count of those who went through security.

“I was speaking today with the National Weather Service and the folks at FEMA as they’re preparing for the landfall of a very dangerous hurricane. It’s going to affect a lot of families, it already has,” Romney said at the event.

He continued: “And the damage will probably be significant and of course a lot of people will be out of power for a long time and so hopefully your thoughts and prayers will join with mine and people across the country as you think about those folks that are in harm’s way.”

The former Massachusetts governor encouraged supporters to donate to the American Red Cross. “We love our fellow Americans, wish them well!”

President Barack Obama, who also canceled campaign events, spoke to reporters in the White House Briefing Room earlier Monday, saying “millions of people” will feel the storm’s impact. He held a briefing Sunday at FEMA’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. and met with officials on Monday in the White House Situation Room.

Recently, we at Campaign for America’s Future launched MassKnowsMitt.com, where Bay Staters can share their memories living under Mitt Romney’s stewardship. If you ever wondered by Romney is losing his home state by 20 points, reading these stories will tell you why. Today, the Boston Globe editorial board jumped in, spurning its former governor in favor of President Obama. The Globe didn’t focus much on Mitt’s dubious record while governor, but raised the question whether Massachusetts really does know the real Mitt.

In recent years, the metro D.C. area has faced its share of natural disasters. There was the derecho, and before that, there was the earthquake. Both of those were unexpected disasters. Now we sit waiting for Hurricane Sandy, a potentially devastating disaster that was forecast weeks ago, to make landfall. But there’s an even bigger disaster looming behind this hurricane. It’s not a natural disaster, but an ideological disaster that could strike the whole country, and promises to cost more in terms of human misery and human life than any natural disaster we’ve faced so far.

Conservatives and the Christian Right regularly blame hurricanes on abortion, liberals, government and “teh gay.” But Hurricane Sandy actually is an “unprecedented.” This “Frankenstorm,” with a gale-force wind diameter of 1040 miles, is the largest hurricane in Atlantic history, with the lowest barometric pressure. So we really should ask the question: is Hurricane Sandy actually God’s punishment for not bringing up climate change in the presidential debates?

Here’s hoping all of my readers, tweets and personal friends back east are safely tucked up somewhere cozy tonight and that this storm turns out to be far less devastating than expected. And, in case you were wondering, Mitt Romney thinks federal disaster relief is immoral.

Reader Supported News

Sen. Bernie Sanders: Tax Dodgers on Wall Street Have No Shame.

en. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today said corporate leaders should look in the mirror before lecturing the American people on ways to tackle the deficit.

The senator’s comments came after the heads of more than 80 big companies issued a statement on deficit reduction. Sanders released a report detailing how many of the companies headed by the same CEOs have avoided taxes, sent American jobs overseas and took taxpayer bailouts. Click here for the full report.

“There really is no shame,” Sanders said. “The Wall Street leaders whose recklessness and illegal behavior caused this terrible recession are now lecturing the American people on the need for courage to deal with the nation’s finances and deficit crisis. Before telling us why we should cut Social Security, Medicare and other vitally important programs, these CEOs might want to take a hard look at their responsibility for causing the deficit and this terrible recession.

“Our Wall Street friends might also want to show some courage of their own by suggesting that the wealthiest people in this country, like them, start paying their fair share of taxes. They might work to end the outrageous corporate loopholes, tax havens and outsourcing provisions that their lobbyists have littered throughout the tax code – contributing greatly to our deficit,” Sanders added.

Many of the CEOs who signed the deficit-reduction letter run corporations that evaded, in total, at least $34.5 billion in taxes by setting up more than 600 subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands and other offshore tax havens since 2008. As a result, at least a dozen of the companies avoided paying any federal income taxes in recent years, and even received more than $6.4 billion in tax refunds from the IRS since 2008.

Several of the companies received a total taxpayer bailout of more than $2.5 trillion from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department.

Many of the companies also have outsourced hundreds of thousands of American jobs to China and other low wage countries, forcing their workers to rely on unemployment insurance and other federal benefits.

“In other words,” Sanders said, “these are some of the same people who have significantly caused the deficit to explode over the last four years.”

Sanders, a member of the Senate Budget Committee, said the $16 trillion national debt is a serious issue. He has proposed specific ways to lower deficits. For details, click here.

A Progressive Deficit Reduction Plan

Repeal all of the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax breaks for the top two percent. Repealing the 2001 and 2003 tax breaks for the top two percent would reduce the deficit by about $1 trillion over the next decade. After President Clinton increased taxes on the top two percent, the economy added over 22 million jobs. After President Bush reduced taxes for the rich, the economy lost over 600,000 private sector jobs.

Create an emergency deficit-reduction surtax on millionaires. Enacting a 5.4 percent surtax on adjusted gross income of more than $1 million would raise over $383 billion over 10 years, according to the Joint Tax Committee. According to a February 2011 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 81 percent of the American people support the creation of a millionaires surtax to reduce the deficit.

End tax breaks and subsidies for big oil, gas and coal companies. If we ended tax breaks and subsidies for big oil, gas, and coal companies, we could reduce the deficit by more than $113 billion over the next ten years. The five largest oil companies in the United States have earned about $1 trillion in profits over the past decade.

Establish a Wall Street speculation fee of 0.03 percent on the sale of credit default swaps, derivatives, stocks, options, and futures. Both the economic crisis and the deficit crisis are a direct result of the greed and recklessness on Wall Street. Establishing a speculation fee would reduce gambling on Wall Street, encourage the financial sector to invest in the productive economy, and reduce the deficit by $350 billion over 10 years without harming average Americans.

Eliminate tax breaks for companies shipping American jobs overseas. Today, the U.S. government is actually rewarding companies that move U.S. manufacturing jobs overseas through loopholes in the tax code known as deferral and foreign source income. During the last decade, the U.S. lost about 30% of its manufacturing jobs and over 56,000 factories have been shut down. If we eliminated these tax loopholes, the Joint Tax Committee has estimated that we could raise more than $582 billion in revenue over the next ten years.

Prohibit abusive and illegal offshore tax shelters. Each and every year, the United States loses an estimated $100 billion in tax revenues due to offshore tax abuses by the wealthy and large corporations. The situation has become so absurd that one five-story office building in the Cayman Islands is now the “home” to more than 18,000 corporations. The wealthy and large corporations should not be allowed to avoid paying taxes by setting up tax shelters in Panama, the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, the Bahamas or other tax haven countries. Cracking down on offshore tax shelters could reduce the deficit by as much as $1 trillion over the next decade.

Establish a currency manipulation fee on China and other countries. As almost everyone knows, China is manipulating its currency, giving it an unfair trade advantage over the United States and destroying decent paying manufacturing jobs in the process. If we imposed a currency manipulation fee on China and other currency manipulators, the Economic Policy Institute has estimated that we could raise $500 billion over 10 years and create 1 million jobs in the process.

Tax capital gains and dividends the same as work. Taxing capital gains and dividends the same way that we tax work would raise more than $730 billion over the next decade. Warren Buffet has often said that he pays a lower effective tax rate than his secretary. The reason for this is that the wealthy obtain most of their income from capital gains and dividends, which is taxed at a much lower rate than work. Right now, the top marginal income tax for working is 35%, but the tax rate on corporate dividends and capital gains is only 15%.

Establish a Progressive Estate Tax. If we established a progressive estate tax on inherited wealth of more than $3.5 million, we could raise more than $300 billion over 10 years. Sen. Sanders introduced the Responsible Estate Tax Act that would reduce the deficit in a fair way while ensuring that 99.7 percent of Americans who lose a loved one would never see a dime of their loved one’s estate paid in federal estate taxes.

Reduce unnecessary and wasteful spending at the Pentagon, which now consumes over half of our discretionary budget. Much of the huge spending at the Pentagon is devoted to spending money on Cold War weapons programs to fight a Soviet Union that no longer exists. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Lawrence Korb, an Assistant Secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan, have estimated that we could achieve significant savings of around $100 billion a year at the Pentagon while still ensuring that the United States has the strongest and most powerful military in the world.

Require Medicare to negotiate for lower prescription drug prices with the pharmaceutical industry. Requiring Medicare to negotiate drug prices, similarly to what the VA currently does, would save more than $157 billion over 10 years.

Eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse within every federal government agency. Virtually everyone agrees that there is waste, fraud, and abuse in every agency of the federal government. Rooting out this waste, fraud, and abuse could save between $150 billion and $200 billion over the next 10 years.

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Elizabeth Warren on the Man Made Financial Crisis

By Charles Pierce, Esquire Magazine

25 October 12

ast weekend was a good one for Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate here in Massachusetts. She’d managed to crack open a slim, but noticable, lead over incumbent Scott Brown, who seemed bound and determined to demolish his own personal favorability rating and, as a result, had slipped some three to five points behind Warren, depending on which poll you read. Senator Al Franken came to a labor event in Worcester last Thursday to stump for Warren, and then she appeared with a number of other Democratic candidates, including congressional candidate Joe Kennedy, at the Laborer’s Hall in Hopkinton, which sits in the middle of a complex of playing fields and meeting halls that various unions tucked together behind the pines years ago as kind of a general headquarters.

In fact, it is the active involvement of organized labor, which was not there in 2010 when Brown upset Martha Coakley to take over the seat held for five decades by Edward Kennedy, that has,as we’ve seen in the course of following the race on The Politics Blog, energized Warren’s campaign in the last weeks before the election. Boston mayor Thomas Menino has swung a particularly heavy bat, both with his influence within the labor community, and with this own personal political operation as well. As we rode between the Laborer’s Hall and the next event on her campaign schedule Saturday afternoon, Warren talked about the events that first brought her to public prominence – the financial collapse of 2008, the Wall Street chicanery behind it, and the ongoing repercussions that are so much a part of her basic campaign message. Oh, and the former governor up here.

CHARLES P. PIERCE: How did we get back again to too big to fail? How did that happen?

ELIZABETH WARREN: I think it happened a couple of different ways. One of them was – and I think there was a miscalculation back in 2008, 2009 – a lot of people, at least I subscribed to it, a lot of people thought, Okay, we have 30 years of trying deregulation and to cut taxes and it has brought us to the biggest financial crisis since the great depression. So I thought what would happen over the next 50 years, we’d spend one year rewriting the financial rules and we’d be tough on the banks – as a country, we would be. And then the next 50 years, we’d concentrate on rebuilding America’s working families, creating opportunity and a better middle class, creating these opportunities for kids to rise out of poverty for all of our children to be included, because that’s what we do. I just truly believe that. I looked at that in 2008, 2009 and said, We tried the experiment…. Well, it just seemed so obvious to me! We had tried it, right? Coming out of the Great Depression to basically late ’70s, early 1980s, just almost every piece of legislation that passed through Congress was through the filter of: Does it strengthen the middle class? Does it create more opportunities for working families? And that was the litmus test. That switches in the early ’80s, when the Republican party says the role of government is to protect those who’ve already made it, let them keep more of the money, let them keep more power. And so we tried that for 30 years and ended up with an economy that almost ran over a cliff and crashed into the stone age.

So the deregulation starts. We start pulling the threads out of the regulatory fabric and we actually do it in two ways: one is to repeal certain regulation, Glass-Steagall is amended multiple times before it is finally repealed completely in 1999. As new financial products, as new innovations come along, there’s no regulation. So the regulatory fabric, you know, they just pull one thread out after another. And what happens? So there’s the savings and loan crisis at the end of the ’80s. They keep pulling the regulatory threads out, at the end of the ’90s, there’s long-term capital management, remember? Showed us that the whole world is stitched together economically. They keep pulling the regulatory threads out and then the next big crash is 2008.

This was not a natural disaster. The crash of 2008 was manmade. And that’s important because it has both halves in it. If we’re not careful, we create more problems,and it also means though it’s within our capacity to prevent this from happening. There were no financial crashes between the 1930s and the late 1980s until the deregulation started again. The relevance of this is what I think is so interesting about this: you know, there was a financial panic. They used to call it “panic,” roughly about every 15 years from the 1790s forward, and it was the insight in the 1930s that we can do better than this. We can put some basic rules of the market: transparency, a level playing field, which were the SEC rules; the FDIC, you know, to make it safe to put money in banks. And we bought 50 years of economic peace. But it’s always the case that the financial institutions, they’re always looking for the chink in the wall. They want everyone else to follow the rules, but, you know: Can they get one little advantage? Can they get one little exception?

(Warren became a national celebrity when she was called in to assess the damage, and to conduct oversight of the Troubled Assets Relief Program, aka TARP, aka The Really Big Bank Bailout. It was in that capacity that she first ran up against the nexus of financial and political power that had camouflaged the ongoing structural thievery of the financial-services economy.)

CPP: I just remember watching this thing on NBC’s evening news one night and the guy saying the entire United States financial system is on the brink, and I say, What?

EW: Yeah. Exactly.

CPP: But if what you’re saying is true, the crisis just exploded on the general public and then it was explained in gobbledygook.

EW: And then it was explained in gobbledygook, which is a way of saying: Be helpless. Leave it to a handful of insiders to solve the problem. We’ll take care of this, you know, and the rest of you relax. Just give us seven hundred billion dollars. But that was the point – that was the battle of whether it’s gonna be all about the experts and they’re going to go behind closed doors. I mean that metaphorically, but that’s really what was happening. How much crazy language and it makes no sense and it’s gobbledygook – that’s a way of telling everybody else: Be helpless.. And that means no accountability. Nobody’s accountable, you know? And then the metaphors, you know: This is like a big hurricane.

I was in Washington about 12 minutes before I figured out, Wait a minute, the financial rules will be rewritten following this crisis, so this is a chance, you know? The door is gonna open. I don’t know how wide or how long, but let’s get in. So, everybody’s talking about, in Washington, the top of the heap, the top of the pyramid, the top of the mountain, capital-reserve requirements for the nine largest financial institutions of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, and I’m waiving my hands saying, But the market is broken at the family level, at the household level. Remember, this crisis started one lousy mortgage at a time. So if the so-called experts just go off and fix the top and don’t do anything about what’s happening in the consumer credit market, which had changed from a market where they looked at you and said, Well, you have a credit history, you’ve lived somewhere, I can afford to lend you this much money, you’re probably going to pay it back, to a market that was based – think about this, several of the largest financial institutions in this country had a profit model based on tricking their customers.

CPP: Would you have voted for the bailout if you were in the Senate?

EW: You know, without restrictions, no. So I’m going to put it this way: It was clear something had to be done. The part that I was just beside myself over was the lack of accountability. I mean accountability in every meaning of that word: how the money would be given out, whether or not the banks would be accountable for it. Go back and look at that first report, because that’s what that first report is about. I could not believe that, that the treasurer of the United States government was shoveling money out the door to the nine largest financial institutions on a no-questions-asked basis…. And in some ways it was worse than that, because it not only had no restrictions to speak of, it had no restrictions in the statute – it was a bait-and-switch. Do you remember what TARP stood for? It was to buy up mortgages – bad mortgages – and stabilize the system by buying those mortgages and riding them down. Remember how much of that happened? Pretty much nothing…. Not much was the answer, and it was much slower and much later. Instead, Paulson started pushing that money out the door to the financial institutions. So, first report, I would describe as: What’s going on here? The second report, I would describe as Paulson – as calling Paulson out for not making that clear. And then, third report: We had brought in our own economic team to look at this – the third report was showing how, by using the same terms for all nine of the big financial institutions, what they were really doing was bailing out the four in the most trouble, the one that was in the most trouble and then the next three or four and using the rest of them for camouflage for how bad the financial system was.

Now think about this. They all got it on the same terms. Why do you do that? It was to provide a bigger subsidy for the financial institutions that were in the most trouble and to provide camouflage so no one noticed. And that was our third report, and we raised holy hell.

(Not long before this particular afternoon, Warren had received the endorsement of Sheila Bair, the Republican who’d been chairman of the FDIC through the entire financial crisis. At one point, Bair, Warren, and Mary Schapiro, the chairperson of the Securities and Exchange Commission at the time, shared the cover of Time. Bair also had come to Massachusetts to campaign for Warren.)

EW: You’re gonna laugh. Adam was driving us, and, what was it you described it as, Adam? We were dishing on the other – we sat in the back seat, Shelia and I did, dishing on the other people in the financial system. But the thing is, it’s not just like we’re sitting around like a bunch of old people saying, Back in the day…. This is still going on. The financial system is still at risk and here’s what’s interesting: The ball hasn’t stopped rolling on financial reform. Watch what you wish for, right? So Dodd-Frank is this big complex bill, but, as you know, part of the goal is to bring these large financial institutions to heel, and the financial-services industry tries to roll that out, tries to create as many loopholes as it can. The Volcker rule as been much delayed and complicated and so on, but what it means it is it has kept open the question of what the new regulation’s look like.

Then, Dan Tarullo stepped out last week. Dan Tarullo is one of the governors of the Federal Reserve, and Turullo stepped out and said maybe we should consider capping the size of financial institutions, and he had a new way to do it, rather than doing it on deposits, which was the old way of doing it. He wanted to do it on liabilities, but Tarullo put back in play the idea of the break up of the big banks. That’s gonna cause a few hearts to skip a beat on Wall Street.

(Which is pretty much how she became a candidate, to try and control the uncontrollable and unaccountable forces of financial power. And, thus, she became a politician, and, by now, she’s a pretty good one. “Six weeks ago,” said an old political strategist at her Worcester event, “I wouldn’t have given her a chance. Now, I’d say she’s probably the favorite.” She’s also running so that nobody forgets how close we really came to losing it all.)

EW: I cannot believe that. The first time I saw the videotape of Mitt Romney saying, On the first day of his presidency…, I’m not kidding you, my mouth fell open. I thought, Wait a minute, this guy, four years after the greatest crash since the Great Depression, this guy is running for office? On embracing the rule that lead to the biggest financial crash since the Great Depression! Hello?

And that’s the thing that makes it so remarkable about what the Republicans are saying. They say they want to cut taxes and reduce regulation, right? Mitt Romney says on the very first day, what will he do? He will get rid of all the Dodd-Frank regulations, and that’s a way of saying that the Republican plan is to let the rich and powerful get richer and more powerful and somehow – that that will be America’s future and that’s their vision for America’s future. I just… I don’t know how we do anything other than get up and fight.

Charlie has been a working journalist since 1976. He is the author of four books, most recently “Idiot America.” He lives near Boston with his wife but no longer his three children.